Irian Jaya and East Timor

A connection between the Sukarno and Suharto eras was the ambition to
build a unitary state whose territories would extend "from Sabang
[an island northwest of Sumatra, also known as Pulau We] to Merauke [a
town in southeastern Irian Jaya]." Although territorial claims
against Malaysia were dropped in 1966, the western half of the island of
New Guinea and East Timor, formerly Portuguese Timor, were incorporated
into the republic. This expansion, however, stirred international
criticism, particularly from Australia.

West New Guinea, as Irian Jaya was then known, had been brought under
Indonesian administration on May 1, 1963 following a ceasefive between
Indonesian and Dutch forces and a seven-months UN administration of the
former Dutch colony. A plebiscite to determine the final political
status of the territory was promised by 1969. But local resistance to
Indonesian rule, in part the result of abuses by government officials,
led to the organization of the Free Papua Movement (OPM) headed by local
leaders and prominent exiles such as Nicholas Jouwe, a Papuan who had
been vice chairman of the Dutch-sponsored New Guinea Council. Indonesian
forces carried out pacification of local areas, especially in the
central highland region where resistance was particularly stubborn.

Although Sukarno had asserted that a plebiscite was unnecessary,
acceding to international pressure, he agreed to hold it. The Act of
Free Choice provisions, however, had not defined precisely how a
plebiscite would be implemented. Rather than working from the principle
of one man-one vote, Indonesian authorities initiated a
consensus-building process that supposedly was more in conformity with
local traditions. During the summer of 1969, local councils were
strongly pressured to approve unanimously incorporation into Indonesia.
The UN General Assembly approved the outcome of the plebiscite in
November, and West Irian (or Irian Barat), renamed Irian Jaya, became
Indonesia's twenty-sixth province. But resistance to Indonesian rule by
the OPM, which advocated the unification of Irian Jaya and the
neighboring state of Papua New Guinea, continued. Border incidents were
frequent as small bands of OPM guerrillas sought sanctuary on Papua New
Guinea territory.

East Timor and the small enclave of Oecusse on the north coast of the
island of Timor were poor and neglected corners of Portugal's overseas
empire when officers of Portugal's Armed Forces Movement, led by General
António de Spínola, seized power in Lisbon in April 1974. Convinced
that his country's continued occupation of overseas territories,
especially in Africa, was excessively costly and ultimately futile, Spínola
initiated a hasty "decolonization" process. In Portuguese
Timor, local political groups responded: the Timor Democratic Union
(UDT) favored a continued association with Lisbon, the Revolutionary
Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretilin), demanded full independence, and the Popular Democratic
Association of Timor (Apodeti) favored integration with Indonesia.

Although Indonesia's minister of foreign affairs, Adam Malik, assured
Portugal's foreign minister on his visit to Jakarta that Indonesia would
adhere to the principle of self-determination for all peoples, attitudes
had apparently changed by the summer of 1974. Fretilin's leftist
rhetoric was disquieting, and Jakarta began actively supporting
Fretilin's opponent, Apodeti. Fears grew that an independent East Timor
under Fretilin could become a beachhead for communist subversion. At a
meeting between Suharto and Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam in
September 1974, the latter acknowledged that it might be best for East
Timor to join Indonesia but that the Australian public would not stand
for the use of force. This acknowledgment seemed to open the way for a
more forward policy. External factors relating to the communist
subversion theme were the conquest of South Vietnam by communist North
Vietnam in May 1975 and the possibility of a Chinese takeover of the
Portuguese colony of Macao.

Fretilin had become the dominant political force inside East Timor by
mid-1975, and its troops seized the bulk of the colonial armory as the
Portuguese hastened to disengage themselves from the territory. An
abortive coup d'état by UDT supporters on August 10, 1975, led to a
civil war between Fretilin and an anticommunist coalition of UDT and
Apodeti. Fretilin occupied most of the territory by September, causing
Jakarta to give the UDT and Apodeti clandestine military support. On
November 25, 1975, Fretilin proclaimed the Democratic Republic of East
Timor. Jakarta responded immediately. On December 7, Indonesian
"volunteer" forces landed at Dili, the capital, and Baukau. By
April 1976, there were an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 Indonesian troops
in the territory. On July 15, 1976, East Timor was made Indonesia's
twenty-seventh province: Timor Timur.

Indonesian troops carried out a harsh campaign of pacification that
inflicted grave suffering on local populations. Through the late 1970s
and 1980s, accounts of military repression, mass starvation, and disease
focused international attention on Indonesia as a major violator of
human rights. An undetermined number--from 100,000 to 250,000--of East
Timor's approximately 650,000 inhabitants died as a result of the armed
occupation. However, by the mid-1980s, most of the armed members of
Fretilin had been defeated, and in 1989 the province was declared open
to free domestic and foreign travel.